Death Stranding Preview

Death Stranding is Hideo Kojima’s new baby and it has all of the video game world excited.

If you are familiar with video games then you know Hideo Kojima. One of the most prolific game designers of our generation, Hideo Kojima, was the head developer of the popular franchise Metal Gear Solid. Now thatnKojima has left his former employer, Konami, and started his own company many people are curious to see what he is making next. We recently got a taste of his next project at this years Sony E3 press conference.

During the conference Kojima walked on stage and revealed an interesting new trailer for his next project, Death Stranding. Many ideas are swirling around the internet theorizing what it could entail. After the conference I went scouring Reddit, Neogaf and Wikipedia to find out what exactly we can glean from this trailer.

After researching I think that Kojima’s new game is about the future of man and machine and our connection with nature. The technological singularity is when artificial intelligence gains the ability to upgrade and improve at a rate that is exponential.This exponential improvement in intelligence leaves almost endless but scary possibilities. When machines can upgrade on their own and think faster then human beings then what is the future of mankind? I think that Kojima’s next game will try to answer that question.

After looking at the trailer we can see many things that can lead us to this conclusion. As we see Retus’s character in the first few seconds of the trailer you see a reflective black liquid on the ground.One thing that is essential for machine life is oil or a fuel source.I think that this black substance could be oil or some form of fuel for the advanced machines featured in Kojima’s game.

As Norman Retus’s character stands up and walks further down the beach we see many dead fish, crabs, and whales. If we look at the animals we can see that they all have small black wires that look like umbilical cords attached to them. My theory is that the machines have attached these cords to them to siphon energy from the biological life on earth. Similar to the machines featured in the popular Matrix trilogy.

After the trailer was shown Sony and Kojima productions released a cinematic poster for the game. Reddit users were able to enhance the photo and see that Retus’s character has equations carved into his necklace. According to Wikipedia, and other Reddit users those equations are connected to black holes and the singularity. The singularity is a term used in theoretical physics but is also used in reference to artificial intelligence. I think that these equations are referring to not a black hole but the event that caused artificial intelligence to advance and cause the world where Death Stranding takes place.

By examining the trailer we can see many strange things about this new world that Kojima is building.We see that the world is in chaos and that the natural world is in disarray.Different theories are made every day about this new game but we still don’t know much about this new and interesting project.Knowing Kojima’s history I am sure that this new title will be interesting and full of creative life.I can not wait to see the future of Death Stranding and Kojima Productions.

This article was written by Ian Preschel. He can be found on Twitter @IanWhyNot and for more thoughts on video games check out @OKBeastNow.